


Familiar

by sass_bot



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Injury, Drabble, F/M, implied PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 15:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20229967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sass_bot/pseuds/sass_bot
Summary: In Anya's restless dreams, she's chased by the demons of her past, so she seeks out the one person allowed to see her cry.[Originally posted on tumblr 11.10.2018]





	Familiar

It’s red all around her—red like the cracks in the stone walls that are closing in around her—like the poison coursing through her veins—like the vines that clench around her heart. And it keeps getting closer and closer, no matter how far or fast she runs. Each footstep falls muffled and they keep getting closer.

One of them grabs the back of her shirt and tugs her onto her back, and she struggles in vain, flailing her limbs like a cockroach waiting for the boot. The gash across her womb has opened again, and she feels it gushing out blood through her fingers, soaking her bedsheets. They can smell her dying. She can see their eyes on her, like little red pinpricks—even in the familiar darkness of her bedroom—they loom over her, all teeth and hunger, and she is the feast.

_Anya… Anya… Anya…_

She can’t speak or scream; their vice-like grip on her throat grows tighter and tighter.

And she jerks to consciousness, feeling wetness in her eyes, and wetness in her blankets. Her heart pounds so hard that she almost doesn’t hear the frightened voice from beside her.

“My lady?” Who is it this time? Philippa? Christine? Laurel? She comes into focus, a pretty thing with fat cheeks and skin like white porcelain, topped with soft blonde hair—Gretel, one of the cook’s girls. She’s shuffled out of bed and is standing by with nothing but the moonlight illuminating her soft, milky curves. “Would you like me to get you a change of sheets, M’lady?”

Anya’s face is a complacent mask as she sits up, while Gretel’s face grows more and more loathsome the more Anya looks at it.

“Get out.” Her voice comes from the back of her throat like a growl.

“I… My lady?” she squeaks, kneeling down hastily to gather what she could from her clothing.

“Get out!” Anya croaks. “Get out, now!”

The startled woman fumbles clumsily with her clothes and then dashes out of the room, leaving Anya alone with the stinging sensation in the back of her throat and the tremors in her shoulders, eyes wearily searching for monsters in the darkest corners of her chambers.

But the monsters are elsewhere. They crawl and scrape against the walls of another man’s room—fading in and out of reality—beckoning and calling him with their sweet and malevolent whispers.

Cullen’s heart leaps into the wall of his chest when he hears a thunderous racket echo from the bureau beneath his bedroom. He hastily puts on a shirt and trousers, and places his scabbard on his belt.

As he descends the ladder in his study, he can see that a single candle has been lit on his desk and at least three of his shelves have been emptied of their contents, but the culprit is nowhere to be seen. Yet he knows she’s still there; he can hear her breaths come out of her in quick, sharp gasps, likely hidden in the shadow of his desk. He carefully edges around it the way one would approach a kitten so as not to frighten it away.

“I know you’re there,” he says, slowly removing his scabbard and placing it on his desk.

Looking at her feels like stepping into a memory of a time when things weren’t so difficult. She’s all curls and a beautiful, doll-like face. Her entire body is wrapped around a large leather-bound volume, holding onto it like a child holds her mother, her puffy tear-stained face pressed against the cover—_In Pursuit of Knowledge: The Travels of a Chantry Scholar_by Brother Genitivi—one of the books Cullen had managed to rescue from Kinloch Hold as it fell apart.

He sits down beside her, back resting against the side of his strong mahogany desk, and sighs deeply. “What are you doing here?”

“Are you as blind as you are stupid?” she grumbles. “I’m crying. Obviously.”

“I can see _that_. But why are you crying here?”

He hears a small sniffle that’s far too delicate to have come from the woman he has known for over a decade. “You’re the only person who’s seen me cry.”

“Ah, and so I’ve doomed myself to a fate of watching you cry for the rest of my life?” he says, suppressing an urge to reach over and comb his fingers through her inky black curls.

She lets out a small and indignant “Yes.” Her head tilts to the side slowly and deliberately, resting on Cullen’s shoulder. He can’t even remember the last time he felt her warm body against his; ten years have felt like an entire lifetime. He feels like an actor settling back into a role he’s outgrown.

“Why me?”

“I trust you.”

“Are you drunk?”

She snorts. “No.” The question doesn’t seem to offend her though. She simply burrows closer into his side, and he finds himself wrapping his arm around her shoulder and pulling her closer, burying his face in her hair, which has smelled like vanilla for as long as he can remember. It’s a familiar feeling, even if she is not the same woman.

“Read to me,” she says, handing him the book.

Once he takes the book from her, he feels one of her hands migrate to his chest, playing innocently with one of the buttons on his shirt. He squeezes her gently before opening the volume to the first chapter.

Tomorrow, they’ll go back to pretending that they don’t know each other—that they can’t stand each other’s company. They’ll put their traumas back in their boxes and hide them away where nobody can look at them, because they have to—because they’re not children anymore; they’ve outgrown each other and this can’t happen anymore.

But for now, they need each other. And familiar is enough.


End file.
